Alabama graduate acting on Broadway

Stephen T. Williams performing alongside Tom Hanks in ‘Lucky Guy'

Stephen T. Williams, seen here in 2004, is a University of Alabama graduate. He will be performing on Broadway in “Lucky Guy.”

File | Tuscaloosa News

By Mark Hughes CobbStaff Writer

Published: Monday, April 1, 2013 at 3:30 a.m.

Last Modified: Sunday, March 31, 2013 at 10:44 p.m.

A lucky guy, maybe; but hard work and training, natural talent, and more hard work brought him to Broadway. Tuscaloosa native and University of Alabama graduate Stephen T. Williams, acting opposite Tom Hanks in “Lucky Guy,” has arrived in theater's mecca, just as many around here predicted.

UA System spokeswoman Kellee Reinhart saw Williams' star shine in his first play, a production of “Once On This Island” at Central High School. Back in 2004, when fans and friends threw a going-away party on his graduation from UA, she said: “He is a towering talent. We knew we were watching the beginning of an incredible career, like seeing a young Sidney Poitier. We knew we'd see him on Broadway one day.”

Within a week of hitting the Big Apple, he'd landed a starring role in a national tour, gaining his Equity (the actors' union) card in the process. He's worked steadily upward since, in independent films and on TV, including the lead role in the Showtime movie “Children of God,” and a part in the David Mamet-written HBO film “Phil Spector,” along with numerous off-Broadway and prestigious regional theater works.

The New York Times, Variety and others have noticed. Some of his best reviews came from last year's production of Athol Fugard's “My Children! My Africa!,” for which the playwright was involved.

Variety said: “Williams is never less than a strong presence from the moment he comes onstage, but he's positively riveting in a beautiful — and painful — soliloquy in which Thami reveals the secret thoughts and buried feelings that have transformed him from a scholar into a fighter.”

The Times wrote: “Stephen Tyrone Williams has the most layered role, and he mines its ambivalence with both fierceness and precision.”

New York Magazine said: “Stephen Tyrone Williams has gotten in the habit of being the best thing about a highly imperfect production; here, he does it again. He's a young performer who combines great power and great subtlety, and — uniquely for an actor with leading-man looks — he's entirely protean: I've never seen the same Williams on stage twice. He feels around for the air-gaps in Fugard's relentless position-paper and fills them with immediacy, fierceness, freshness, youth. Bravo.”

Perhaps because of the star power involved — “Lucky Guy” is the Broadway debut for not only Williams, but also Hanks. It's directed by George C. Wolfe, and written by the late Nora Ephron, as her last completed work — it's already a hit. Preview performances have been packed. It officially opens today.

“Lucky Guy” is based on the true story of tabloid columnist Mike McAlary (Hanks), who rose spectacularly, writing about the scandal-ridden New York City of the 1980s, but suffered a horrific fall, with a libel suit falling about the same time as the diagnosis of colon cancer that ultimately killed him.

Williams plays Abner Louima, a Haitian brutally assaulted by policemen. McAlary came back in his final months, bringing the horrors of Louima's story to life, and winning the Pulitzer Prize for that work, shortly before succumbing to cancer on Christmas Day 1998.

One lucky guy who saw it last week was Cornelius Carter, one of Williams' mentors as director of the dance program at UA.

“It was absolutely brilliant,” Carter said. “Stephen was breathtaking. He's got this one scene at the end, the audience just falls completely quiet; everybody's holding their breath when he delivers these very important lines at the end, with Tom Hanks.”

Like Reinhart, he spotted Williams' star quality in “Once on This Island,” which Carter guest-choreographed. “I knew this kid would end up on Broadway,” Carter said.

Even after auditioning for “Lucky Guy,” and getting called back at the end of last year, Williams wasn't sure this would be his Broadway breakthrough.

“I was in a Starbucks when I got the call, and I was like ‘You have got to be kidding me,' ” he said, laughing. “George has this incredible reputation; he can work with whoever he wants to work with. So I went in (to auditions) knowing, more than likely, it won't happen, but dammit I'm gonna go in the room and give it my best.”

It was the allure of working with Wolfe, as much as Broadway, that drew him. Wolfe has won Tony awards for directing “Angels in America: Millennium Approaches” and the musical “Bring in ‘da Noise/Bring in ‘da Funk.”

Williams didn't even know Hanks was set to star.

“I didn't find out that Courtney B. Vance was in it until like two weeks before we started,” he said. The cast is filled with journeymen actors of TV, stage and screen such as Vance, Maura Tierney, Christopher McDonald and more.

“I've always thought they were amazing, but to actually see them in the rehearsal space, how they craft these incredible performances ... I've learned a lot, and it has everything to do with my cast.

“There seems to be this understanding of the story, but being completely open during the process: ‘Even if this doesn't work, let's see it anyway.' There's a process of trial and error leading up to this performance, this very clear, very specific performance. And it's like, ‘Wow.'

“You better believe every moment I'm not on stage, I'm in the wings, storing it up. I will store that for later, thank you very much.”

For much of the play, McAlary's friends and fellow journalists tell tales of the high-living columnist; Hanks lives some of them out. Near the end, the libel suit against McAlary had been dismissed, but it had forced him to admit several opinions from columns were unfounded. Though he'd cut back his work load because of the cancer, McAlary found the drive to complete one last crusade, making a grab for redemption with Louima's story.

“In the second half of the second act, where my scene is, it's just me and Tom for that,” Williams said. And yes, he can now call Tom Hanks simply Tom. “That's what's so incredible about it, just like you and I would be hanging out and chill between scenes; I'll look over and it's Tom Hanks in this rehearsal room!”

Hanks is much like his good-guy image, Williams said. “There's not a lot of pretense with him,” he said. “After that first performance, and going outside (to greet crowds at the stage door; it looked like ‘nobody had gone home,' Williams said) and realizing, this is his life every day, and he's still just a good guy.”

The past several years have seen Williams working from the Bahamas to Seattle and back to New York City, so he's not a stranger to audiences. But the scale has changed.

“There's something about getting off the subway, walking down the street, seeing lines on 44th to the box office” at the Broadhurst Theatre. “I don't know if it's being in the middle of Times Square, I don't know if it's Tom Hanks, I don't know if it's being in a house with 1,500 people. That's different,” Williams said, laughing.

Being surrounded by so many talented people at the top of their game is “inspiring, but also daunting, too.”

“What I love most about acting is that moment: You get the group of actors all coming from different places, this house of people from different races and different places, they're coming from work, for the most part they don't know the people they're going to be sitting with ... And there's this moment, when there's no movement on stage, no talking on stage. Just stillness. And there's no talking or movement in the house. We're all in this space, sharing this moment together.”

He's loved having folks from back home coming to see him work, like Carter, or the big group from Huntsville that gave out a big “Roll Tide!” after one show. His father will be at today's opening. “It's gonna be pretty special.”

But Williams resists claiming the moment as an arrival.

“Something feels uncomfortable about declaring ‘I've made it.' Maybe I don't know if it's an exact destination. More than anything I just feel it's a huge opportunity, and a huge responsibility. I know Tuscaloosa people who have gone to New York, and who have moved back home. I know tons of actors in New York, and I've heard from tons of actors who've been here for years, and they haven't gotten to Broadway yet.

“More than anything, I try to focus on tonight, making my best a little better, every night. Don't have to do no Marlon Brando tricks; just every night, progress a little better.

“That is how I show my gratitude for this play. I wanted to work with George Wolfe before I left Alabama. I dreamed about working on Broadway when I first started acting, 14 years ago, and it's here.

“What am I gonna do with it? That's what it means.”

Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged.